Ataman M2R Carbine

A Folding Carbine to go toe to toe with the Bullpups
For the past year, the Airgun world has seemed to be dominated by an onslaught of premium grade PCP bullpup rifles. FX has been leading the pack with the FX Wildcat and FX Impact. Daystate has taken the Ultra-Premium approach with the Pulsar. Air Arms launched the Galahad. As popular as the Bullpups are though, there are still people out there who’d rather have a small take-down or folding stock carbine to call their own.

Ataman – Over a decade of Airgun Experience
Ataman has been in the business of building Russian airguns in 2005. In 2010 they restructured, and began to broaden their audience. They follow ISO 9001 engineering best practices, and have made it their goal to deliver high end products to rival that of the more established European manufacturers. At SHOT Show 2016, their rifles, and especially their upcoming A16 pistol, drew quite an excited crowd to the Air Venturi booth.

Ataman M2R Carbine Ultra Compact .22
Thanks to a helpful customer of Trenier Outdoors, I was able to do a very short review of the Ataman M2R Carbine. I did not want to overly impose upon the rifle’s owner, and as such I was unable to get as much testing in with this rifle as I would have hoped to.

Trying and failing to get the Scopecam working

4350 psi fill pressure (300 BAR)

130CC Air Cylinder

Black soft-touch stock, ambidextrous

Adjustable length of pull

Foldable stock

Sidelever action

Lothar Walther free-floating barrel

2-stage adjustable trigger w/Self-indexing 10 shot magazine

Shrouded barrel

Up to 980 fps

Fully regulated

Up to 38 fpe

Built-in air pressure gauge

Length 23.22″ folded, 32.28″ total

Ataman Airgun M2R .22 Caliber

Initial thoughts
The Ataman M2R Carbine performed very well. Groups at ranges under 30 yards rivaled that of any other precision PCP air rifle. We had to go past 40 yards, and closer to 50 in order to truly get a feel for what this rifle was capable of producing.

856FPS average with JSB Jumbo Exact Heavy 18.13 .22 pellets

20 Shots on a 200BAR fill (the owner was currently using a SCUBA tank for filling so was only going up to 200 BAR)

Great rifle choice for those with non-standard length of pull due to adjustable stock

300BAR fills are hard to maintain without a compressor or a cascade setup.